Well, we arrived 2 days ago in Moscow and hit the ground strolling.First, we dropped off our luggage at the the church, packed some clothes and shuffled off for an overnight stay with our Russian host families. 2 of the girls, Jael and Rachel, stayed with Pastor Alexander and his wife, Luda. The other 3 girls (Kellie, Andrea, and Tami) stayed with a gril named Oxana. The 3 guys stayed with Anitoli and his wife Ina. We all experienced different Russian dinners with our host families. The next morning we all met at Red Square and toured around. They were cleaning up after Victory Day, which celebrates the end of WWII 65 years ago. We then ate lunch - some of us had traditional Russian cuisine (Jason's description being 'fried things w/ stuff in it' and 'boiled things with stuff in it') while the others suffered by eating Sbarro pizza. We then went back to the church to pack for our 2-day trip to St. Petersburg. We rounded out the day by going to the Bolshoi Theatre to see 'MacBeth'. After the play we went to the 'very' Russian restaurant TGIFridays, before trekking off to the train station to begin our overnight train ride to St.Pete - which departed at 1:50am. We arrived at 11:30am to begin our second full day here in Russia.
We started out by continuing our American food streak by going to Subway, after which we went to our hostel, named 'Location Hostel' directly across the street from the Administration Building and the Hermitage. The name of the hostel speaks for itself, as it is located at the heart of the city, but located on the 5th floor - which offers up some amazing views of the city. We dropped off our stuff, and then took a boat tour of the canals. St. Pete is known as 'Venice of the North'. After touring this gorgeous city we made our way to St. Isaac's Cathedral - the 4th largest cathedral in the world. We all took a bunch of photos and then got ready for supper, so we did what any self-respecting Russian might do - we went to Pizza Hut. We finished out the day by relaxing at the hostel to get ready for tomorrow. Before we could get off to bed, oddly enough, we were invaded by the Freanch, or at least a small group of them. They were very good at waving their white sheets while making up their beds.
